Friday, February 22, 2013

About our ruling Overclass

By my own admittance here previously, I am at best a poor student in the classical sense of the word. I learn more from watching three hours of Discovery, or NatGeo, or Science, et al, than I would in several semesters of college. My mind does not process or 'store' information that I 'study' on purpose.

Hell, I wish it did, how much easier would life have been!?

My normal school 'ability' was at odds with the world in which I grew up. I think if I'd been born 50 or 100 years ago, given the same natural intelligence, I could have done MUCH better. But there were no 'frontiers' either physical or in business, that could be overcome in the late 20th Century just by my smarts and hard work. Oh there were some I guess, but several times I ran up to the same wall, education, with no way to scale it AND live indoors, eat regularly and feed my kids. Ultimately I did go back to school, but I only got a Certificate in Electronics. A field I'd been working in for 10 years. And all the classes I took, I'd already passed in HS and then again in the Navy.

So I didn't really 'learn' anything in college then.

But that Cert was what I based the rest of my working career around. But just how stupid a system is that? That in order for me to get "X" job, I had to go to, what I think of as, the 'right' school. But here's the crux of my posting, just WhoTF makes those decisions? Who decides just what The Right Stuff is? And why is it that the system is SO broken now? Well, here's one opinion, and it's one I not only agree with, it's exactly what I've been screaming for about 40 years.

The Chinese imperial bureaucracy was immensely powerful. Entrance was theoretically open to anyone, from
any walk of society--as long as they could pass a very tough
examination. The number of passes was tightly restricted to keep the
bureaucracy at optimal size.

Passing
the tests and becoming a "scholar official" was a ticket to a very
good, very secure life. And there is something to like about a system
like this . . . especially if you happen to be good at exams. Of
course, once you gave the imperial bureaucracy a lot of power, and made
entrance into said bureaucracy conditional on passing a tough exam, what
you have is . . . a country run by people who think that being good at
exams is the most important thing on earth. Sound familiar?

I was damned near cheering when I finished reading the entire article. I just wish the hell more people 'got' this. I think there are plenty of us who could do jobs that it 'requires' a degree to get. But I mostly say that because of two jobs I once held.

Before I went in the Navy, I was a Dominos Pizza Manager. I had a store near a college campus and all my employees were undergrads or grad students, from NCSU, St. Augustine's U, and Shaw U. After I got out of the Navy, jobs were tight (1982 SUCKED) and I wound up back there. But I was only 'allowed' to become a Asst Mngr, because the new franchisee, and most of them were like this then, had decided that you couldn't run a Dominos unless you had a degree. It didn't matter what degree, but it was a requirement.

Well, just what could have changed about making and delivering pizzas over that 6 years to require a degree to run that SAME store I'd run? The attitudes of those in charge is what changed, do YOU care what kind of schooling your pizza guy has?.

Later I stumbled into a job just before the company changed the minimum req to having a degree. The company leased eqpt and we did field service and training in poultry hatcheries. Again it didn't matter what kind of degree, but they preferred an animal science degree of some sort. I stayed there 5 years, in that time I had to train about 12 or 14 degreed people, some with masters Degrees. I never had one complaint from any of my people about how they were trained. Actually, when I left there I was the only trainer to ever get to that level.

Over the years there, I got tons of good words about my work from my customers to my bosses. My bosses were always happy with what I did. The only reason I ever left there, is that I was fired, because my NEW boss didn't think I had the right 'image' for the clientele. As with the other job, someone decided that a clientele I knew and who knew me, would be better served by someone other than me, based on some arbitrary 'IT' that the customers had never asked for.

I think things have only gotten worse in that ensuing 30 years since the 80's.

I see ads for jobs all the time now that call for college degrees, and for the life of me I simply can't see WHY it's a requirement. Oh well, I quit expounding now and you can go read the article. I think it hit a number of great points. I just wish I cold win one of those big fat Power Ball pots.

I'd start a business or two and I wouldn't hire even one person with a degree. If for no other reason, than to prove that it CAN be done. This country was built by people without college degrees, what suddenly has changed to create a need for all these degrees?
.
.
Schteveo.

4 comments:

Spider
said...

OT:

If you were wondering how the ChiComs are usually able to put out a weapons system that is an "exact" copy of one it took us decades, and hundreds-of-Billion to create, this story may help you understand. And yet, not only is our govt. apparently afraid to say anything to them, "our" govt. may even be helping them.

We've been doing this since that jack ass Clinton was in the WH. And why we don't go after the document 'sharers' is beyond me. Before that we once and actually ferreted out and locked up SPIES. But I have to tell you, IMO, when they DIDN'T hang, shoot or juice that MFer John Walker and his kid and the Sr Chief who worked with them, we sent a BAD message to would-be spies!

It's the same kind of half-assed prosecution in the face of overwhelming proof, that allows many criminals to walk out from under death sentences, or long jail time, with a plea deal.

But with respect to China, here's the question partner.

How MANY times will leaders of the worlds countries stand by and watch yet another country do what the Chinese are doing? Build a HUGE military, some of it based on OUR stolen plans. History is full of these rises and falls of that happening.

And the politicians who allow it and cause the next big war(s), RARELY suffer the consequences. That always falls on the shoulders of the 'commoners'.

And who's going to stop them? Certainly not us, even though we have the economic means to, if not stop them, then certainly get their full attention. The way things are going, and if another leftist wins in 2016, the ChiComs could very well end up taking our country over, and without have to put one pair of boots on the ground.

As we've seen before, selling out the country is nothing when compared to HUGE profits. On both sides.